Chapter 28 Easton #2
He’s toying with me, just like he did before, even if he doesn’t realize it.
“Hawk’s friend texted today,” I announce as we pull into the carport. “I guess it’s a good thing I told Thomas not to come.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You’ve never even met this guy.”
I shrug. “I looked him up. He’s hot and Kelsey likes him. That’s good enough for me.” I climb out of the car and move toward the door.
He reaches me faster than I dreamed he could. “So you’re planning to marry someone else but ready to fuck a total stranger,” he hisses.
I round on him. “You were the one who said I should sleep with someone else.”
He steps closer. I can only get away from him by moving toward the wall, even as my body strains toward his. For the soft press of his mouth, for the weight of him bearing down on me, for the way his tongue would part me and then destroy me.
“You know he’s not who I fucking meant,” he says, closing the space between us, with his knee between my thighs as he pins me to the wall.
His mouth lands on mine, as if he’s held his breath for five years, waiting for it. As if he’s been starved, a wild thing off its leash. Soft and hard, rough and sweet, all at once.
I should have more pride than this, but I simply yield, a full-body yes. I arch toward him and he groans, lifting me with his hands beneath my ass, angling me so that his cock is pressed between my legs. Even separated by his clothing and mine, the friction is electric.
Or maybe it’s simply that I’ve waited five years and two months for him to do this again.
He kisses me hard, his mouth moving to my neck, one free hand slipping inside my shirt.
When I gasp, his head jerks to the left and the right, and then he’s carrying me, ten feet behind the house to that patch of soft sand leading to the ocean.
He falls to his knees and lays me down, his hand slipping beneath the lining of the shorts, his eyes locked on mine in the moonlight.
I’m already soaked, beyond ready, and too frantic for something slow and thoughtful.
His mouth lowers, first to my calf, then my knee and my inner thigh.
His gaze moves to that strip of fabric between my legs, as if he’s trying to make out the shape of me beneath it and my breath, already inconsistent, ceases to exist. His chest rises and falls as he continues to look, and then his exhale ghosts between my legs.
His eyes slowly raise to mine, and then he leans close and presses his mouth first to my thigh. Then farther, to where his fingers still glide.
His tongue scalds me through the shorts’ lining—that’s how sensitive it is, how primed I am for it.
“Take them off,” I whisper, and he groans, as if I’m the one undressing him, then tugs the shorts down my legs.
Could someone see us out here, in the moonlight?
Possibly. But I’m squirming with need, breathless with it, and I don’t care about the neighbors.
I don’t care about the past. I just want his tongue where it was and—
Ah. His fingers brush against my softest skin, where I’m already soaked. It’s too gentle—I need more. My hand tightens in his hair, as if I’ve never had an orgasm, as if I didn’t just give myself one the night before last, while he was in the bathroom five feet away.
He presses his mouth to my clit again and breathes me in before his tongue flickers. I ache. Have I ever wanted Thomas like this? If so, I can’t recall it. I’m so swollen it hurts. I could finish in five seconds if he’d just stay right where he is.
My hand digs into his scalp, silently begging for more.
“Not yet,” he croons.
He scoots closer, lowering my bra and pinching each nipple, his eyes at half-mast as he watches them tighten for him, watches the way it makes me gasp.
Through his shorts he gives himself a single, hard squeeze and then he lowers again, his mouth first on my breasts, then my stomach, and finally back—exactly where I want it.
“Elijah,” I cry as my thighs tremble. He pushes two fingers inside me hard, without warning, and I decimate, gripping his hair, arching against his mouth as I come.
He remains there, licking and sucking until my back has settled into the sand.
I’d forgotten how good he was at that. Or maybe I didn’t forget—I’ve just spent years telling myself I’d misremembered.
“Come here,” I say hoarsely.
He shoves his shorts down and climbs up until he’s close enough for me to take him in my mouth.
His cock is swollen, red and angry, already dripping for me. I pull the thick head of it between my lips and let my tongue swirl around it.
His breath stutters. “Fuck, Easton, it’s too good.”
There’s so much of him. I want to feel his cock pushing inside me. The thought of it makes me even wetter than I was. He throws his head back for a moment, lost to the sensation, then gazes at me again to watch. He’s controlling himself, not going too far, making sure it’s okay.
“You have no idea how often I’ve dreamed about fucking your pretty pink mouth,” he groans, pressing a little farther. “I’m going to come so hard, Easton. I’m going to come so hard, straight down your throat.”
I moan, and that’s all it takes.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and then he explodes, pulsing against my tongue.
His eyes squeeze shut and he falls forward, his arms braced on either side of me for one long moment before he finally pulls out.
I’ve still got his cum spilling from my mouth. When his hand descends, I assume it’s to wipe it away, but instead he smears it across my chin, as if it’s the finishing touch to a painting he’s proud of.
He swallows. “I’ve wanted that for a very long time,” he says. “It might have been obvious by the way I came in about five seconds.”
I can’t even reply. I’m no stranger to sex—I lost my virginity in high school, and I had boyfriends before Thomas.
I’m a stranger to sex like this, however: the kind that leaves you decimated and shell-shocked, the kind that temporarily robs you of speech and leaves your limbs sinking into the mattress—or in this case, sand—like dead weight.
This is what I’ve been missing. Not simply with Thomas but with anyone.
And it doesn’t do me a lot of good to have discovered it.
Elijah’s no more an option than he ever was.
Less of one, actually. I now have a career that can’t wind up anywhere near Oak Bluff, and he’s got a construction business based there that’s years in the making.
He’s also never once indicated that anything has actually changed since the last time this happened.
He rolls off me, but when he tries to tug me toward his chest, I resist. “You don’t need to do that,” I say. I have the oddest urge to cry. As if I haven’t shed endless tears over him already. I sit up and start brushing the sand off my arms.
“I don’t need to do what?” he asks.
“You don’t need to pretend this was romantic or something.” I laugh, but there’s no joy in it. “Don’t worry—I won’t make you give me another speech about how this was all in my head.”
He sits with a heavy sigh. “That’s not what I did.”
I move faster, jumping to my feet, grabbing my shorts off the ground, because a sob is swelling in my throat.
It’s coming out whether I want it to or not, and I don’t even know why it’s there. “Yeah, you did, actually. But don’t worry—it’s fine this time because I no longer see you that way either.”
He presses his head to his knees. “Jesus Christ, Easton,” he mutters. He sounds hurt.
I wince, a momentary hit of guilt, and then rage against it. Why am I always the villain? He had his way with me in someone’s garage and said he wanted to marry me, but the next day it was my fault, because I should have known who he was, because I should have been smart enough not to expect much.
And now I’m the villain for parroting his words back to him.
“I was just trying to let you know I wasn’t going to make anything of it, and you were okay with that expression when you said it,” I reply, shimmying the shorts back on, “but apparently it’s entirely different when it’s coming from me, isn’t it?”
“The difference,” he replies, “is that I didn’t say it trying to hurt you.”
“Don’t complain about my jagged edges when you’re the one who broke me in the first place,” I tell him, but my voice rasps.
It’s true, right? I might have been fucked up in a million small ways when I was younger, but it was the way he pulled the rug out that ruined me for good, that turned me into this shell of who I was.
He’s spent this whole goddamn trip complaining about who I’ve become without once acknowledging how much of it was his fucking fault.
I head for the house before he can see that I’m already crying—just like I was the last time I left him on a beach like this.
It doesn’t take him long to catch up to me. I’m fumbling with the lock when he walks up, his face harsh under the carport’s dim light.
I step inside, and he follows me up the stairs.
“You’re crying,” he says, reaching out to cup my face, swiping a tear away with his thumb.
“Don’t worry about it,” I whisper, pulling away. “It’s fine. I’m sorry about what I said. I’m taking a shower.”
He lets me go, which is for the best. Every bone in my body wants to lean against his chest, but that’s not his role now. It never was his role.
I stumble into my room and head to the shower, where I blindly scrub myself off. I climb into bed without drying my hair, too exhausted and sad to bother. Mrs. Cabot will have a field day about how rough I look tomorrow, but I don’t fucking care.
I turn and put my face down into the pillow so Elijah won’t hear that I’m still crying.
This was such a huge fuck-up on my part.
I’m sure Thomas has done worse, and technically I’m blameless, but.
..I still shouldn’t have opened this door with Elijah, because I’m not sure how I’ll ever shut it again.
I’ve spent half a decade recovering from him and even if I didn’t make a ton of progress, I made some.
Now I’m back at square one.